ng lines deepened across her forehead,
and she stared straight before her with her perplexed and anxious look
under her rustling crape.

"Yes, I'll take 'em off an' lay 'em away an' git back to work," she
rejoined. "It did seem as if I might have taken a holiday at a time like
this--my next do' neighbour, too, an' I'd al'ays promised him I'd see
him laid safe in the earth. But, no, I can't do it. I'll go take off my
veil an' bonnet an' stay at home."

Before this attack my father grew so depressed that I half expected to
see tears fall into his cup of coffee, as they had into mine. His
handsome gayety dropped from him, and he looked as downcast as was
possible for a face composed of so many flagrantly cheerful features.

"I declar, Susan, I wa'nt thinkin' of that," he returned apologetically,
"it just seemed to me that you'd be mo' comfortable without that sheet
of crape floatin' down yo' back."

"I've never been comfortable in my life," retorted my mother, "an' I
don't expect to begin when I dress myself to go to a funeral. It's got
to be, I reckon, an' it's what I'm used to; but if thar's a man alive
that would stand over a stove with a crape veil on his head, I'd be
obliged to him if he'd step up an' show his face."

At this point; the half-grown girl who had promised to look after the
baby arrived, and with her assistance, my mother set about putting the
house in order, while my father, as soon as his luncheon basket was
packed, wished us a pleasant drive, and started for old Timothy Ball's
marble yard, where he worked. At the sink in the kitchen my mother, with
her crape veil pinned back, and her bombazine sleeves rolled up, stood
with her arms deep in soapsuds.

"Ma," I asked, going up to her and turning my back while she unfastened
my bib with one soapy hand, "did you ever hear anybody call you common?"

"Call me what?"

"Common. What does it mean when anybody calls you common?"

"It means generally that anybody is a fool."

"Then am I, ma?"

"Air you what?"

"Am I common?"

"For the Lord's sake, Benjy, stop yo' pesterin'. What on earth has gone
an' set that idee workin' inside yo' head?"

"Is pa common?"

She meditated an instant. "Wall, he wa'nt born a Savage, but I'd never
have called him common--exactly," she answered.

"Then perhaps you are?"

"You talk like a fool! Haven't I told you that I wa'nt?" she snapped.

"Then if you ain't an' pa ain't exactly, how can I be?" I concluded with